Not only is the netting much stiffer this time around, I also made the petticoat longer and much fuller, using most of the material I had in order to achieve maximum floofiness. I cut strips of the netting so that each of the three tiers was double the width of the tier above it. The bottom tier is 13½ yards around! The middle tier is 6¾ yards, and the top tier is about 3½ yards around, gathered into a waistband of white polished cotton. I hand-stitched the entire petticoat, using the selvage of the material for a pre-finished hem. The waistband is top-stitched to look nice and tidy.

And then, after finishing the waistband, I came to a conundrum. How to close the waistband? I didn’t want anything lumpy or uncomfortable, and I wanted some flexibility in the circumference of the waistband. So I decided to use ribbons or tapes, stitched to each end of the waistband, to tie together. But alas! I had no simple white ribbons or tapes of an appropriate size in my stash, and I didn’t know when I’d have a chance to go to the store.

But then I ran across a bag of pre-finished turquoise satin ribbon bows. I’d bought them some time back at the Michael Levine’s Loft store in the Fashion District in Los Angeles, for a dollar or two, without any particular plan. After untying two bows and stitching them on as ties, I decided that the turquoise ties needed company – in the form of the application of many more bows to the petticoat. It makes for a slightly silly petticoat, but there’s something inherently silly about Really Fluffy Petticoats, so I just ran with it. Now my excellent petticoat is delightfully covered in turquoise bows!

This petticoat is satisfactorily fluffy for many things, though I still dream of going even fluffier, especially for evening wear. The netting I used here is excellent for the purpose, and I’m planning to go on the hunt for more like it at some point. I also want to try making a similar petticoat (possibly even wider?!) out of synthetic organza. Of course, silk organza would make a truly delicious petticoat, but I think that’s probably out of my price range for a while.

I made this petticoat of standard JoAnn’s nylon netting in an ivory color, using a hybrid of several different petticoat tutorials I found online. It’s pretty basic – three tiers of netting, each double the fullness of the one above, and gathered to it. I sewed it by hand, because I didn’t want to do battle with that much machine-gathering (I don’t trust machine gathering), especially using something as fussy as synthetic netting. Unfortunately, the petticoat really didn’t end up sufficiently fluffy, because the netting was fairly soft, and probably needed more yardage anyway. Clearly, my petticoat efforts needed to be far less modest in future if I was going to get the oomph I wanted.

Nevertheless, I did complete the petticoat, even after I discovered that it wouldn’t have as much floof as I wanted. I finished it with an ivory synthetic satin enclosed waistband. And it does have some floof, but in order to really manage proper 1950s style poofiness, I need several other petticoats with it. Still, it was a good learning experience. And it led me onward to my next floofy adventure: the 1950s style petticoat of stiff white netting trimmed with bows.

An ongoing goal of mine is trying to achieve full 1950s floofy skirts. I love the full-skirted Dior New Look style, and I’ve always found it very interesting, in part because it so clearly hearkens back to fashions of around a century earlier, with the dropped shoulder, nipped in waist, and full skirts. There are some interesting social and cultural components that go along with that, but as much as I enjoy looking at such things in an analytical way, I also just really enjoy fluffy skirts.

And to have fluffy skirts, 1950s style, one needs petticoats. So I have been experimenting with petticoats! My first petticoat, the 1950s style petticoat of soft ivory netting, wasn’t as fluffy as I would have liked, so my second attempt, the 1950s style petticoat of stiff white netting trimmed with bows, used stiffer netting and lots more of it. I still have further adventures in petticoat-fluff planned, but I’m quite happy with the second petticoat, and the first has its uses as well (including layering with the second for Extra Fluff). Using the stiff net (as opposed to the softer netting available from JoAnn’s) definitely works well, and I’d like to experiment with a crisp synthetic organza as well – and, of course, silk organza would be lovely, but prohibitively expensive.

I gleaned information from a variety of sources in devising how to cut out and put together my petticoats. These are the sources I consulted:

A very expansive black synthetic net petticoat, dated “circa 1955,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It appears to be made of a seriously impressive quantity of very fine netting, with stripes around the hem. I want one.

By Ava Trimble

I'm a historian of domestic life, clothing, and needle arts, working on my M.A. in public history at New Mexico State University. I like making connections between cultural history, social history, material culture, and (dare I say it?) experimental archaeology. I believe in studying the history of clothes, sewing, and housework with as much intellectual rigor as any other aspect of history, and I have a vendetta against polyester reproduction garments in museum exhibits.

Join me as I research obscure stitching techniques, strive to create obsessively accurate reproduction clothes, and opine at length about the comfort and functionality of various iterations of undergarments.